With the emergence of green building practices, architects are continually seeking sun control strategies to improve the overall performance of the building envelope. The use of sunshades, often in conjunction with interior light shelves, are two such strategies. Most light shelves are long, continuous expanses of cantilevered material and necessitate onsite construction. The light shelves reflect sunlight coming into a room of a building through a window, for example, upwardly toward the ceiling of the room.
The installation and maintenance of these conventional light shelves present a number of potential problems. For example, the cost of field labor is typically significantly greater than shop labor, and these conventional light shelves are not typically prefabricated. In addition, attaching fixed sized panels to vertical mullions or vertical wall studs that are not perfectly spaced creates potential alignment problems during installation. Furthermore, interior panels tend to gather dust, which diminishes the performance of the reflective upper surface of the panel. With conventional light shelves, it is difficult or sometimes impossible to access the upper surface.